Life post oil and post carbon

Last week we launched our Green Gas for Britain report and started our campaign to change government thinking, on where Britain gets it gas. It’s something we’ve been working on for a couple of years. This is my personal perspective on that.

Ecotricity began life in 1995, born of the realisation that the conventional way of making electricity, by burning fossil fuels, was the biggest single source of climate change. Our proposed solution was a new kind of electricity, the green kind.

We were the world’s first green electricity company, and while the technology to make green electricity was relatively new, we could see a potential future where all electricity was made this way – utilizing the Wind, Sun and Sea. What we couldn’t see was a renewable alternative for gas, and for many years we held the view that we had to simply wean ourselves off of this rather versatile energy source, and shift heat loads from gas to electricity. That changed for us in 2010 when we bumped into the concept of green gas – gas made by the anaerobic digestion of organic material, which could then be ‘scrubbed up’ and put into the gas grid. It was a direct parallel to green electricity. And our missing link.Continue reading “Green Gas”

Here’s an interview I did with ITV a couple of weeks ago, discussing the EU referendum result.

I still believe that a 4% margin for leave over remain is too small for such a dramatic change in our country’s relationship with the EU – especially because the pledges made by Johnson, Farage and Gove about the NHS and immigration have turned out to be lies.

We’re going to end up with a worse deal by leaving rather than remaining in the EU, so I hope that once the Brexit plan has been finalised, a second referendum will be called and people can decide if that’s really what they want for our country.

It’s by Mike Berners-Lee and it’s a very different approach to the subject of food efficiency.

I’ve seen a lot of statistics on this issue, mostly around the amount of plant protein it takes to produce animal protein – for example 10kg of plant protein to make 1kg of Beef. That’s at the top end of the figures but Beef is always the worst performer with Chicken and Fish at the more efficient end of the scale – but still taking more protein in than they give back.

Mike comes at this in a way I’ve not seen before and I thought it was worth sharing.

Cheers

Guest post: Can eating less meat really tackle climate change?

Mike Berners-Lee

With the food system accounting for up to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, anything that reduces its impact will make a big difference to the climate.

It is a system riddled with inefficiencies and waste. Humans don’t simply eat food straight out of the ground, of course. It’s harvested, stored, processed – or fed to animals who are in turn slaughtered and processed – and finally packaged and delivered. Each of these stages uses energy, which means emissions.

In very rough terms, the world grows about 6,000 calories per person a day in edible crop harvest. That is about three times the 2,000 calories a day that end up getting to be eaten by humans. This would be enough to feed everyone if we shared it round perfectly, which we don’t, so some people go hungry while others eat more than is good for them.

One of our customers and member of Climate Friendly Bradford on Avon shared his experience of driving an Electric Vehicle with us and we thought you might like to read it.

Things have moved on greatly since this blog started posting about EVs, not least Ecotricity’s national network of Electricity ‘Pumps’ – the Electric Highway – it’s great to read some real-world experiences of production cars.

Anyway, over to Adrian…

On Sunday I was listening to the relaxing hum of electricity filling my electric vehicle (EV) while thinking how much my motoring life had changed in the last 12 months. This time last year, I was standing at a petrol station in Canada filling my V8 Mustang with 60 litres of dirty fossil fuel. Now I am “filling” my car with green electricity at an Ecotricity fast charger. Continue reading “Guest Post: 120 days with a BMW i3”

You have to pinch yourself when the government announces another new subsidy for the fossil fuel industry, not only because they so recently said that renewable energy should stand on its own two feet, but also because they’re announcing this just days before the latest climate conference in Paris – at which world leaders will gather to try and hammer out a global deal to reduce emissions. To reduce emissions, we need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Our government is completely out of touch on this issue.

A leaked letter from Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd, seen by The Ecologist shows that the Government’s public position that we are going to meet our legally binding renewables target – is not the truth. On the contrary the government clearly believes we will miss the target and Rudd discusses various options for making up the shortfall – none of which appear to be viable, by her own assessment. The one option not discussed is the reinstatement of support for renewable energy… instead Rudd appears to pin her hopes on the support for renewable heat not also being cut.

The ‘green energy austerity’ of this government is a political choice. It’s not driven by logic or economics, but ideology.

Around 1,000 jobs were lost last month as one of Britain’s biggest solar companies went into administration – a direct result of the government’s slash and burn of green policies. There’ll be more to come as the impacts of recent announcements begin to bite.

The irony is that this came in the same week as a new report, from Bloomberg, confirmed that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy we can build. This is the latest of many reports that show just how illogical the government’s approach to energy policy is, and just how much the renewable sector has to offer.

Around 25% of the UK’s power now comes from renewable sources – an indigenous energy supply that creates no pollution, is immune to global commodity price rises, enables us to hit climate change targets and creates jobs and industry right here in Britain. Continue reading “Cameron’s Green Energy Poppycock”

We’ve been a bit busy recently and haven’t been able to blog about this dire situation but Jonathon Porritt wrote this one, which pretty much sums up exactly how we feel about it. Reproduced here with his permission. Thanks Jonathon.

Things go from bad to worse on the renewable energy front.

1. Even those who are accustomed to George Osborne’s hostility to the renewables industry were astonished by his announcement in the Budget on Wednesday that renewable energy would no longer be exempt from the Climate Change Levy – this being one of the measures the Government uses to discourage the use of fossil fuels! This will cost the industry £3.9bn between now and 2018. Shares in renewable energy companies plunged.

Zero Carbonista

This blog is about answers to the big questions - how will we keep the lights on, what kind of cars will we drive (will we drive?) and how will we feed ourselves - in a post oil world, and a world where we can't afford to keep burning things and throwing things away. Energy, Transport and Food are the three big issues.